Read Chapter 11: Terms and Conditions

They made rules.

This was Clara's idea, which Luc considered proof that romance had been captured by administrative culture.

"Rule one," she said over breakfast the next morning. "The shop comes first during opening hours."

"Agreed."

"Rule two: no automatic assumption that we spend every night together."

"Agreed."

"Rule three: if either of us wants to stop, we say it clearly. No disappearing."

Luc's expression became serious. "Agreed."

"Rule four: you don't get to use sex to avoid editorial notes."

"Rejected."

"Luc."

"That is an outrageous limitation on artistic freedom."

Clara threw toast at him.

The rules lasted two weeks before life complicated them.

At first, being together was startlingly easy.

They did not announce anything. Sabine knew within twelve hours. Nassim knew within a day. Monsieur Lefèvre seemed to know before either of them did and merely raised an eyebrow when Luc came downstairs wearing yesterday's shirt.

Clara learned that Luc needed thirty minutes of silence after waking and became affectionate only after coffee. Luc learned that Clara read restaurant menus online before agreeing to eat anywhere and could not sleep if cupboard doors were open. She learned that he hated coriander. He learned that she secretly watched terrible property programmes from Britain. He showed her the best cheap Vietnamese place in the thirteenth arrondissement. She introduced him to Marmite, which he described as "an unresolved national trauma."

Their intimacy grew around work rather than replacing it.

Luc drew upstairs. Clara managed the shop. Some afternoons he came down for ten minutes and kissed her in the stockroom. Some evenings she went up with dinner and read on his sofa while he worked. They could be quiet in the same room.

For Clara, this was new.

With Daniel, silence had often felt like absence. With Luc, it could be concentration shared.

Then Calder & Finch called.

Clara's former managing director, Helen Mercer, spoke in the warm, decisive tone of someone accustomed to making offers sound like recognitions of destiny.

"We want you back," Helen said. "Not in the same role. Editorial director. Fiction list. Proper budget, four editors reporting to you."

Clara sat very still in the shop office.

"I resigned."

"People resign. People return. We were stupid to let you go in the first place."

The salary Helen named was nearly three times what Clara could currently afford to pay herself.

"You don't need an answer now. Come to London. We'll talk."

After the call, Clara remained in the office staring at the accounts.

The bookshop had improved, but not enough to guarantee survival. Her savings were shrinking. The landlord's rent increase still began in June.

Editorial director.

A title she had once wanted so intensely that she had measured years by distance from it.

Luc found her twenty minutes later.

"You look as if someone offered you either money or murder."

"Money."

She told him.

He listened without interrupting.

"That's a big job," he said.

"Yes."

"Do you want it?"

"I don't know."

Luc nodded.

Clara waited.

"That's all?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. Something."

"If you want it, you should consider it."

A ridiculous disappointment rose in her.

"Right."

Luc frowned. "What?"

"Nothing."

"That was very clearly something."

Clara closed the laptop.

"I suppose I expected you to have a reaction."

"I am having one. Privately."

"Convenient."

His face hardened slightly.

"You made a rule about not building your life around someone else's needs. I am trying not to tell you what decision would suit me."

That was reasonable.

She resented him for it.

"Fine."

"Clara."

"I said fine."

"In British, that means we are entering a dangerous zone."

"Your cultural education is excellent."

They argued that night.

Not about London exactly. About what support looked like. Clara accused Luc of detachment. Luc accused Clara of asking him to make a demand so she could define herself against it.

"You want me to say don't go," he said, pacing his kitchen. "Then either you stay and blame me, or you go and feel brave. I refuse both roles."

"Maybe I want to know whether it would matter to you."

He stopped.

"Of course it would matter."

"You didn't say that."

"I thought it was obvious."

"Nothing important is improved by being left obvious."

Luc stared at her.

Then he laughed once, tiredly. "Editor."

"Yes."

He came closer.

"It would matter to me if you left Paris. It would hurt. I would miss you. I would still not ask you to refuse a job you want."

The anger left Clara as quickly as it had arrived.

"Thank you."

"You are difficult."

"You live upstairs by choice."

"I did not choose you downstairs."

"Planning permission would have been denied."

He touched her face.

"Go to London," he said. "Hear the offer. Then decide about the job, not about me."

Clara leaned into his palm.

"That sounds suspiciously healthy."

"My therapist was expensive."

She laughed.

Three days later, she booked the Eurostar.